“We danced,” he said. “We laughed, we swapped numbers.”
“And?”
“And, if it’s cool with you, I’m gonna meet her for lunch later.”
“Why wouldn’t it be cool with me?”
“Because it would be shitty of me to leave you here alone.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that. McCoy’s coming over later anyway. Plus, I left you alone a few times when I went out with Isabelle. You should go.”
I said Isabelle’s name like it didn’t matter that we weren’t talking. It mattered a lot. Hunter didn’t push me to talk about it, but I knew he was curious. I was his best friend, and Isabelle was his cousin, so it was understandable. But whatever was happing with us, didn’t mean Hunter shouldn’t hang out with Willow. She probably wasn’t going to be the “action” he’d been hoping for, but it was the most interested I’d seen him in a girl for a long time.
I carefully avoided Isabelle and Georgia until they left for college, and by eleven thirty, I had the whole house to myself. McCoy came over a little after twelve, and instead of staying in, he drove me the short distance to the nearby Starbucks. It was kinda nice to get out of the house, and it wasn’t like I was going to be over-exerting myself. All I had to do was swing through the tables and chairs, and sit down again.
The coffee shop was pretty busy, with everyone stopping to refresh in between their Christmas shopping, but we managed to find a table right at the back. I’d ordered a gingerbread latte, and McCoy brought it over, along with his Americano.
“It’s really good to be able to walk around without people knowing who I am,” he said, as he sat down.
I laughed. “Totally not something I expected you to say.”
McCoy smiled. “I like the attention, but over here, it’s a real vacation, you know?”
“That’s why I came here. It’s great to be recognised for what I do, but it’s really relaxing to know that I won’t be hounded by photographers. Well, it was until yesterday, anyway.”
“Have you had any trouble with reporters since you left the hospital?”
“No. I’ve been pretty lucky they haven’t worked out where I’m staying. I don’t want to bring any more crap on Janet and Andrew after they’ve been so good to me.”
I was still being talked about in the British press, I saw the newspapers, still reporting that I was an aggressive alcoholic. Mischa, following Leon’s lead, had also told her story of how I’d had ten beers, then passed out in her garden.
“About that,” he said, grinning. “What’s the deal with the cute blonde who spent most of last night trying not to look at you? Is she hot for you?”
Weird. Talking to Radleigh McCoy about girls was something I never imagined doing. Not since my last girlfriend only dated me to get closer to him.
“I, well … we were kind of seeing each other,” I began, “but it didn’t really work out.”
“Why not? She’s in to you.”
“She was in to me. But then she decided that her sister is somehow more important than everything that happened at the weekend.”
“There’s a sister?”
“A twin sister.”
Radleigh spluttered into his coffee. “Twins? You didn’t mention you’re living with twins.”
“Does it matter?”
“Makes for a good story.”
McCoy’s stories, pre-Leah, were always about women. No doubt he’d experienced twins, triplets and who the hell knows what else, but I’d never been big on telling stories. Not that I had a whole lot to tell. But it always seemed kinda … cheap to talk about women the way he did.
“I wasn’t trying to make a good story,” I told him. “Georgia’s pretty self-centered, but Isabelle … she’s awesome.”
“So what happened?”
Even though Georgia didn’t deserve to be protected, I still wanted to keep her secret because Izzy asked me to. McCoy would have been the ideal person to tell because he had no strong ties to any of the Mills family but it didn’t feel right, like I’d be betraying Isabelle if I did.